Will lawmakers and congressional candidates commit to upholding the 2024 results? We asked

The figures in this story have been updated to reflect additional responses received as of Monday, Nov. 4.

WASHINGTON ? With nearly half of the country's Republicans and a quarter of Democrats questioning whether next month's presidential election will be fair, USA TODAY wanted to know where members of the next Congress stand on the issue.

So, we surveyed all 382 members of the House and 91 Senators who are either running for re-election or would still be in office in January, asking whether they would uphold the 2024 presidential election results, regardless of the winner. (The remaining lawmakers who were not surveyed either lost their primary races, are seeking a different office or are retiring from Congress.)

We also polled 747 candidates running for the House and Senate whose names are on the ballot this year. USA TODAY couldn't find contact information for 23 additional candidates.

Those who agreed without condition to support the results of the election, regardless of whether Republican Donald Trump or Democrat Kamala Harris is declared the winner include:

• 117 sitting House members, 14 of whom are Republicans and 103 are Democrats;

• 27 sitting Senate members, 2 of whom are Republicans and 25 Democrats;

• 236 candidates for House and Senate, including 130 Democrats, 45 Republicans and 61 third-party candidates.

After the 2020 election, when then-President Donald Trump didn't want to accept that he had lost his bid for re-election against President Joe Biden, he tried to convince members of Congress to raise objections to the votes of several state's electors.

More: We asked every lawmaker if they'd uphold the 2024 election results. Here's what was said

Typically, Congress simply witnesses the counting of the electors' votes. Under the Electoral Count Act of 1887, only a single member of the House and Senate was required to object to electors and state the reason for objection in writing.

On Jan. 6, 2021, after rioters were cleared from the U.S. Capitol, 139 Republicans in the House and eight Republicans in the Senate objected to the electoral votes from Pennsylvania and Arizona, hoping to keep Trump in office.

All Democrats in both congressional chambers accepted the 2020 election results. Numerous recounts, reviews and forensic audits have found the election outcome to be legitimate, and Trump himself has publicly acknowledged that he lost to Biden by a "whisker."

Since then, lawmakers passed the Electoral Count Reform Act ? a modernized version of the 1887 law ? so that objections must be signed by at least one-fifth of the members of the House and one-fifth of the Senators.

The Congress elected this year, which will be sworn in on Jan. 3, 2025, will witness the counting of the electoral votes three days later. Whether they will accept the results and the winner is the question.

Formality turned political

One example of how fraught this largely ceremonial practice has become: A Republican lawmaker who once eloquently defended the importance of Congress upholding the election results won’t commit to doing so again.

“Congress cannot overrule millions of votes certified by those states. It’s a threat to our federalist system and would play into the hands of those seeking to end the Electoral College,” Congresswoman Victoria Spartz, of Indiana, said in 2021.

But recently, Spartz, who held off eight Republican primary challengers, answered USA TODAY’s query by saying: “This question cannot be answered now, since we do not know what is going to happen in November and what the circumstances will be.”

Fairness is in the eye of the beholder

A dozen sitting House members and four Senators said they would only certify the election results if they believed the results to be “fair,” which they defined in various ways.

“You got to stick to what the law says, what the Constitution says," Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican of Missouri told USA TODAY.

"Look as long as everybody’s following election law in the states, I have no problem," said Byron Donalds, a Republican Congressman whose district covers much of Southwest Florida, including Fort Myers and Naples. Donalds voted against certification in 2021.

Notably, two Republican senators who upheld the 2020 election results also attached certain caveats to accepting this year's results.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La. said he would want the process of appeals to be exhausted before he would accept any results.

Susan Collins, R-Maine., said she would uphold the results as long as she believed "the election was conducted in a fair way." Collins was one of the main instigators of the Electoral Count Reform Act, which she said would hopefully avoid "another Jan. 6."

Among Democrats, Rep. Frederica Wilson, of Florida, was one of seven sitting legislators who expressed concerns about election fairness.

“Under normal circumstances, I would fully accept and certify the election results without hesitation," she told USA TODAY.

But she and other Democrats were upset about a recent move to hand-count ballots in Georgia, which she said could open the results up to abuse. A Georgia judge blocked the rule Tuesday after USA TODAY conducted the interviews, but Republicans are appealing the ruling.

Still, she said, "should any lawsuits arise, once the U.S. Justice Department has completed the legal process and (reviewed the) election process, I will accept and certify the election results, no matter the outcome."

Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., said that “any Republican effort to once again impose phony electors to rig the electoral college will be met with my full resistance when the U.S. House is required to certify the election.”

No answer and non-answers

A total of 34 lawmakers and candidates responded but said they couldn’t answer USA TODAY's question or would not uphold the results.

“How can I commit to anything with an election that hasn’t taken place yet?” said Rep. Lauren Boebert, a Republican of Colorado, adding she still has the same hesitations about the results that she did in 2020, when she declined to certify.

Republican candidate Randall Arrington, who's running in Louisiana, said he couldn't commit one way or the other but would make a decision based on his "rational assessment of the election process, and whether or not voter fraud has taken place."

Other House and Senate lawmakers declined to respond at all, including 201 Republicans, 96 Democrats and two independents.

One of those, Republican Sen. JD Vance, of Ohio, Trump's running mate, did not answer whether he would challenge this year's election results in the vice presidential debate earlier this month. However, at a campaign stop in Pennsylvania Thursday, Vance said that Trump did not lose in the 2020 election "by the words I would use."

House Speaker Mike Johnson did not reply to USA TODAY's request for comment, but said in a press conference last month that he would follow the Constitution if the election is free, fair and safe. Johnson shepherded an amicus brief in support of a Texas lawsuit aimed at overturning the 2020 election results in four swing states.

Agreeing to certify

Only one lawmaker who voted against certification in 2021 said he would uphold the results this time, regardless of the outcome. Rep. John Carter, R-Texas, told USA TODAY in an interview at the Capitol that “if Congress does have to certify, I will certify."

Among the candidates, some are making election integrity an issue in their campaign.

About half of the Democrats and third-party candidates are running in deep red states against opponents who objected to the electoral results in 2021.

“I have a problem with any incumbent and any person who was there that voted to not certify the election results,” said Rodney Govens, a Democrat running in Arkansas’ first congressional district against Rep. Rick Crawford, a Republican.

Others are running in races where the incumbent could lose. Although it could enable election deniers to come into office, several candidates said they would uphold the 2024 election results ? including two Republicans running in toss-up seats in Pennsylvania and Colorado.

Two lawmakers, Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., and Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., spearheaded a bipartisan unity agreement to acknowledge that the election winner is certified on Jan. 6, 2025, and serve as a voice for calm, hoping to avoid a repeat of the violence of Jan. 6, 2021.

"Peaceful transfer of power is a key part as core to our Constitution, our democracy and it's our responsibility to give the American people faith in our electoral process," Gottheimer told USA TODAY.

Twenty-two other Democrats and five other moderate Republicans up for re-election ? many of them running in tight races ? signed the pledge.

Sen. Kevin Cramer, from North Dakota, was among 10 Republicans who didn’t sign the pledge but told USA TODAY they would uphold the 2024 election results regardless of the results.

“Our role is not to determine whether to certify or not, but our role is to certify when the real certification happens at 50 states and some territories," Cramer said. "That's the way I view it … It's really the state's jobs to certify the electors, and then ours is to sort of validate that."

Sudiksha Kochi is a Congress, Campaigns and Democracy reporter with USA TODAY. You can reach her at [email protected].

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Will Senate and House lawmakers commit to upholding the 2024 results?